Ryan Reynolds vs Will Smith

Every year a big budget movie takes a sh-t at the box office. The other day I predicted that Will Smith’s After Earth would hold that title in 2013. Sarah from Cinesnark didn’t disagree, but after the trailer for R.I.P.D. was released last week, she thinks it might be R.I.P.D., if only because Will Smith is still a draw and some people love sci-fi sh-t.

Everyone is comparing R.I.P.D. to Smith’s Men In Black with Jeff Bridges in place of grumpy Tommy Lee Jones and dead people instead of aliens. True. And, like the Green Lantern, R.I.P.D. is also a 3D conversion which... didn’t work out for him last time. R.I.P.D. is due out on June 28, right around the same weekend as Green Lantern two years ago. For Reynolds’s sake, hopefully the similarities end there.

Here he is Berlin on Saturday where he’s working on a new film called The Voices with Gemma Arterton. Deadline reported last year that Reynolds will play “Jerry Hickfang, a lovable but strange bathtub factory worker who yearns for the attention of a woman in accounting. When their relationship takes a sudden murderous turn, Jerry’s evil talking cat and benevolent talking dog lead him down a fantastical path that ultimately brings him to salvation.”

The Voices script was on the Black List, and it’s not a loud blockbustery effort, Reynolds’s second in a row, after working on Atom Egoyan’s Queen Of The Night earlier this year. That’s probably a smart move. Reynolds may need to let go of the Movie Star ambition for a while and focus on being an “actor”.

It’s interesting how it could have played out differently. Let’s Hollywood Sliding Doors this situation. Reynolds was confirmed as Green Lantern in 2009. In 2010, they were still looking for Captain America. John Krasinski auditioned. Garrett Hedlund was in there. Even Dane Cook (?!). As you know, Chris Evans was eventually cast, but if he’d been available, Reynolds could very easily have been part of that group. And may have been a very good Captain America with his very own Marvel family membership card by now.